“I don’t think Congress thought it was authorizing dragnet surveillance” when it passed the Patriot Act, Ms Cohn said, “I don’t think Americans think that’s OK. I would be shocked if the majority of Congressmen thought it’s okay.” Over the next few days and weeks, expect a fierce and polarizing debate over just what Americans do feel is acceptable, in the name of their national security.

***

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NEVADA): “Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t anything that is brand new, it’s been going on for some seven years, and we have tried to often to try to make it better and work and we will continue to do that.”

***

“It is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress,” Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told reporters at an impromptu news conference in the Capitol. “This is just meta data. There is no content involved. In other words, no content of a communication. … The records can only be accessed under heightened standards.”

“I read intelligence carefully. And I know that people are trying to get to us,” Feinstein said. “This is the reason we keep TSA doing what it’s doing. This the reason the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counter-terrorism. This is the reason for the national counter-terrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active.”

“As for Gore’s complaint, blanket surveillance,” Powers continued, referring to Al Gore’s earlier tweet that the NSA’s “blanket surveillance” was “obscenely outrageous,” “what other kind of surveillance do you expect them to do? They don’t necessarily know who the terrorists are. That’s why they do the data mining—to go through, to find patterns. These are machines that are doing the data mining. It’s kind of overstating what the situation is, versus people actually spying specifically on your phone calls.”

Even Charles Krauthammer did not take Wallace’s bait to call Obama a 1984-type leader.

“I’m not surprised when [Obama] becomes Commander in Chief and they tell him about the threats out there and his hair stands on end, and he says, ‘Well, perhaps Bush was on the right track here,’” Krauthammer said. “It’s good for the country that a conservative does it and then a liberal and the people understand: this is required.”

***

President Obama co-sponsored legislation when he was a member of the Senate that would have banned the mass collection of phone records that his administration is now engaged in.

The SAFE Act, introduced by former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would have amended the Patriot Act to require that the government have “specific and articulable facts” to show that a person is an “agent of a foreign power” before seizing their phone records…

“The bill very much limit[ed] the scope of these secret orders to people who are believed to be bad guys instead of innocent citizens,” said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at The George Washington University. “It was great that Obama sponsored it at the time, and too bad he has abandoned that principle.”

***

I’m trying to imagine what conceivable of facts would render all telephony metadata generated in the United States “relevant” to an investigation, presumably of the bombing. This would include, of course, all telephony metadata that, as matters turned out, postdates the killing of one bomber and the capture of the other—though there’s no way the government could have known that when the application was submitted. And it would also include all telephony metadata that postdates the government’s conclusion that the Tsarnaev brothers were apparently not agents of any foreign terrorist group. But even if this were not the case, how is it possible that all calls to, say, Dominos Pizza in Peoria, Illinois or all calls over a three month period between two small businesses in Juneau, Alaska would be “relevant” to an investigation of events in Boston—even if we assume that the FBI did not know whom it was investigating in the Boston area and did not know whom that unknown person was communicating with?

“The revelation that the NSA has secretly seized the call records of millions of Americans, without probable cause, represents an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. I have long argued that Congress must do more to restrict the Executive’s expansive law enforcement powers to seize private records of law-abiding Americans that are held by a third-party,” Sen. Paul said. “When the Senate rushed through a last-minute extension of the FISA Amendments Act late last year, I insisted on a vote on my amendment (SA 3436) to require stronger protections on business records and prohibiting the kind of data-mining this case has revealed. Just last month, I introduced S.1037, the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act, which would provide exactly the kind of protections that, if enacted, could have prevented these abuses and stopped these increasingly frequent violations of every American’s constitutional rights.

“The bill restores our Constitutional rights and declares that the Fourth Amendment shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause.”

***

[Y]ou get what you vote for – and both Republicans and Democrats keep on voting for authoritarians. There’s a frustrating hypocrisy that many conservatives applauded the accrual of state power under Bush for the sake of fighting the War on Terror only to scream blue murder about it now that it’s happening under Obama. Likewise, many liberals resented the domestic espionage programme of Bush but have been less vocal about opposing it under Obama. The journalist Martin Bashir has gone to far as to claim that the IRS scandal is a coded attack upon the President’s race, that “IRS” is the new “n word”. Sometimes it feels like Obama could be discovered standing over the body of Sarah Palin with a smoking gun in his hand and liberals would scream “racist!” if anyone called him a murderer. Their capacity for self-delusion knows no bounds.

Finally, totaling every scandal up – IRS, AP phone records, Fox journalists being targeted, the Benghazi mess – this has to be the most furtively authoritarian White House since Nixon’s. We don’t yet have a “smoking email” from Obama ordering all of this, but it can’t be said often enough that there is a correlation between Obama’s “progressive” domestic agenda and the misbehavior of the other agencies governed by his administration – forcing people to buy healthcare even when they can’t afford it, bailing out the banks, war in Libya and the use of drone strikes to kill US citizens. This is exactly what the Tea Party was founded to expose and oppose. All the laughter once directed at the “paranoid” Right now rings hollow.

***

The political impact of this expose is amplified by the broader context of scandal. Taken alone, Obama defenders could probably lean on “Bush started it,” and fight through this, the president’s hypocrisy and broken promises notwithstanding. The real problem for the White House is how the public will receive this story after being battered with negative headlines about the administration’s behavior on other fronts for a full month. It builds. Public confidence in the administration’s credibility is already waning; this won’t help. The NSA revelation feeds a potent and growing sense among Americans that an overbearing, unaccountable, ever-growing, over-powerful federal government is out of control. They’re manipulating intelligence to cover-up the full story on a deadly terrorist attack. They’re targeting one side of the political spectrum for abuse and harassment. They’re secretly spying on journalists. They’re spending our money on wildly expensive parties for themselves and losing the receipts. And they’re secretly culling our phone records by the millions, day in and day out. No one has answers. No one takes responsibility. No one knows anything. No one is punished. This is toxic.

***

I myself am not particularly worried that the FBI will come knocking on my door any time soon. But why are we so sure that this information will only be used to track terrorists? Mightn’t it also be used to track people for other crimes? Once such a treasure trove of data is created, the temptation will be to validate the money spent by using it as often as possible. If you are worried about the IRS misusing its authority to crack down on conservative groups, you should be even more worried about our secret spy agencies collecting reams of data on every aspect of our lives that leaves an electronic trace. If the IRS scandals have taught us anything, it’s how easily a powerful agency, isolated from the eye of the general public, can run amok…

Fifteen years ago, all of us would have laughed at the notion that the government would assert the right to know about every phone call made by ordinary American citizens suspected of no crime—that’s something that East Germany would do, not the American government. How have we gotten so comfortable with the panopticon state in little more than a decade?

My greatest fear is not that this surveillance will turn out to be more widespread. My greatest fear is that we will find out they are spying on us, and the American public will yawn. And in some secret room, bureaucrats and politicians will note that the American public does not care, and turn to discussing how much more spying they can get away with.

***

“Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression,” wrote Postman. “But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

“Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions,” Postman continued.

Everyone , of course, seems outraged by the abuses today. But if the Obama scandals are greeted by the general public with a yawn — if they think about it for a minute, and then decide to watch another episode of “Arrested Development” (which, of course, will be monitored by the state) — you’ll know it was Huxley, not Orwell, who was right.

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When I first met Barry, when he showed up I think it was the summer before fifth grade, he was hanging out at the tennis courts. And at the time that was the very Wimbledon-like, where everyone had to wear white clothes and white tennis shoes. Very careful about the soles of the shoes because you didn’t want to scuff up the courts, mark them up.

So yeah, I can picture him as this slightly — “chubby” is too strong, but rounded, short little guy, Barry Obama. And he told us that his father was an Indonesian king and that he was a prince, and after he finished school he was going to go back, and he would be a ruler in Indonesia. And I absolutely believed him.

I understand that he told his fifth-grade class that he was Kenyan royalty, but I never heard that story until years later. My sister and I remember very clearly that he was an Indonesian prince and that he would be going back there. So there was some reference to where he had come from, and the understanding was his family was there.

IIRC it was Einstein who said that theories / explanations should be as simple as possible but no more.

g’nite all. Off to see Bmore’s artistry spoofing Barky.

Then, tomorrow will be a busy one scrambling the phone lines, putting some foil over the windows, seeing if the NSA has been using my credit cards and further drone-proofing the estate. That, and I’d build the dog a bunker to keep the president from eating it…if I had a dog.

And he told us that his father was an Indonesian king pimp and that he was a prince (hah, hah, hah), and after he finished school he was going to go back, and he would be a ruler in Indonesia AmeriKa. And I absolutely believed him.

Sorry, his father wasn’t an Indonesian pimp, but a Kenyan one. He must have meant his stepfather, who wasn’t a king either. One thing is for sure. The kid was delusional, and clinically perturbed, by then already.

Sorry, his father wasn’t an Indonesian pimp, but a Kenyan one. He must have meant his stepfather, who wasn’t a king either. One thing is for sure. The kid was delusional, and clinically perturbed, by then already.

Sorry, his father wasn’t an Indonesian pimp, but a Kenyan one. He must have meant his stepfather, who wasn’t a king either. One thing is for sure. The kid was delusional, and clinically perturbed, by then already.

Schadenfreude on June 7, 2013 at 1:44 AM

Oh, words can’t even describe…!

“Pop” – Barack Obama

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I’m sure he’s unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies . . .
But I don’t care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses
And know he’s laughing too.

So far today since I put up the latest Holder piece, just under 1500 hits. Most of the other pieces have averaged roughly 20,000. People are starting to see them. No telling how many copy and send via their own emails etc. Views are what count. The one that strikes me the funniest is this one. Almost 45,000 views. Lol! Cracks me up.

And he told us that his father was an Indonesian king pimp and that he was a prince (hah, hah, hah), and after he finished school he was going to go back, and he would be a ruler in Indonesia AmeriKa. And I absolutely believed him.

Pretty real

Schadenfreude on June 7, 2013 at 1:38 AM

People like us reject the cult of personality – beware of those who don’t recognize it and/or willingly serve it!

“And during the few moments that we have left
We wanna talk right down to Earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand”

Look in my eyes, what do you see?
The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights, a Nobel prize
Than the mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You won’t have to follow me
Only you can set me free

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your tv
I’m the cult of personalityI exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three
I’m the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights, a Nobel prize
When a leader speaks, that leader dies
You won’t have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You gave me power in your god’s name
I’m every person you need to be
I’m the cult of personality (I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of)
I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of (I’m the cult of)
I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of personality (I’m the cult of)

So far today since I put up the latest Holder piece, just under 1500 hits. Most of the other pieces have averaged roughly 20,000. People are starting to see them. No telling how many copy and send via their own emails etc. Views are what count. The one that strikes me the funniest is this one. Almost 45,000 views. Lol! Cracks me up.

‘That [surveillance] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology …

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [NSA] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.’

— Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), 1975, quoted in James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace

‘so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.’

If you cross over it then there’s no abyss to have to return from. This guy wasn’t the brightest bulb.

I agree with arnold. Church was an idiot whose primary interest was in attacking conservatives.

All tools can be used for constructive and destructive purposes. No matter what power there was in the government Barky would have abused it to no end. That is who and what he is. For someone so evil and anti-American one cannot put enough restrictions on government to stop them; one must eject them from government altogether and jail them. It is impossible to formulate any law, contract, or procedure that is lefty-proof. No matter how it is written or what is specified, lefties will deform it and turn it into exactly what it was intended not to be and then use that to attack the foundation of America and Americans.

I would believe that more if the government weren’t involved in DARPA, and increasingly upgrading (albeit just converting) military hardware to bio-diesel, and considering the very White House upgrading you refer to. Do you really think NORAD and its associated bunker offices could be taken out by an EMP? I would be shocked if this had not been taken into consideration.

Similarly, this new Utah Data Center is, what?, billions?, only millions? of dollars in computers, with forethought put into nearly diverting a river to provide cooling water to preserve the computers: Do you really think that EMP hasn’t been considered?

And if it has, what really makes you think that private electricity generation with the appropriate circuit protection has not been built for many, or even the majority, of federal core compounds throughout the US?

My view is that government incompetence is a disguise for malicious intent. Even the old decommissioned and presumably declassified NSA facilities demonstrate tremendous competence, foresight and money. To think that the spooky NSA, DHS and the upper-eschelon executive and legislative politicos in the government aren’t asking how durable their secret facilities are is unbelievable.

The creation of the DHS is far and away Dubya’s biggest folly. This is an entity that will only continue to grow — gorging on our dollars, our rights and our privacy. (I know, WHAT privacy?)

Anyone who thinks this can’t end horribly need only to look at history, and at the book 1984. Big brother is truly here to stay, it seems to me. Next up? Real-time surveillance via so-called Smart TVs? Remote hijacking of smart phones and automobile gadgets? Don’t rule anything out.

There is no end in sight to this nightmare. All it takes is one bad actor in the wrong position of authority for this to turn into something of which Himmler would have been proud.

My God, how have we fallen so far from our noble beginnings and our Constitution?

Since you asked, how about national ID cards — with RFID chips? Our passports have them, in case they are lost or stolen, they say.

After that, implanted chips? Why not?

(They already started retinal scanning of school kids in Florida.)

And, no, there’s no going back. This level of power will never be voluntarily surrendered. And the power itself is capable of self-perpetuation by knowing and monitoring the activity and communication of every member of every cell of civic discontent.

My view is that government incompetence is a disguise for malicious intent. Even the old decommissioned and presumably declassified NSA facilities demonstrate tremendous competence, foresight and money. To think that the spooky NSA, DHS and the upper-eschelon executive and legislative politicos in the government aren’t asking how durable their secret facilities are is unbelievable.

flicker on June 7, 2013 at 2:43 AM

.
No, it’s not a disguise – they are incompetent.

What good is the Utah Data Center after an EMP pulse takes down the national electrical grid? What exactly will it be monitoring after the EMP pulse?

What good is having the military on bio-diesel when running a division in battle manuevers consumes the output of a good sized, old fashion petrochemical refinery? (Hint: There is no refinery to produce enough bio-diesel to run that division in battle manuevers.)

The “private electricity generation” would require more fuel to keep those facilities functional than the petro-chemical refineries would need to keep refining oil. Which is more important?

The consumables required to keep JUST the “federal core compounds” running would exceed the logistical supply capacity by orders of magnitude.

Another critical failure point – it takes a metric crap-ton of spare parts to keep refineries and power plants operating 24/7 – where are the spare parts going to come from AFTER an EMP pulse? Where is all the fuel for the trucks to deliver the parts going to come from?

A take away you haven’t considered – the personnel in those “federal core compounds” – what happens to their families and friends who are NOT inside the compounds with them while they are imposing a dictatorship on the country?

Best reference point on the take away – research what happened to cause the Warsaw Pact countries to IMPLODE when the U.S.S.R. was no longer able to provide their dictatorships with the CASH, fuel and resources they needed to maintain control.

Yes, it’s far-fetched. But at the very worst, 10% of the US population would survive the first year. That’s still a population of over 3,000,000.

What exactly will it be monitoring after the EMP pulse?

That depends on if the EMP is global or local. If local, then there still could be tons of storage space and analysis power needed for data from all over the world. Even so, just because it’s not needed in UDC doesn’t mean that the safety technology will not be understood to be needed elsewhere.

There is no refinery to produce enough bio-diesel to run that division in battle manuevers.

My point is not that a bio-diesel military is reasonable, but that the government is still upgrading according to its own ends.

The “private electricity generation” would require more fuel…

One little sub reactor can power a small city.

The consumables required to keep JUST the “federal core compounds” running would exceed the logistical supply capacity by orders of magnitude.

That depends on how much supply can be generated from pre-industrial farming. Also, a local EMP pulse would not necessarily destroy all the US but just a region of it.

spare parts to keep refineries and power plants operating…Where is all the fuel for the trucks to deliver the parts going to come from?

That depends on how much fuel you end up needing just to run the DHS and its skeletalized ancillary dependent organization. And furthermore, due to infrastructure, Texas would do better than most other areas in a local EMP.

what happens to their families…?

As I said at least 10% would survive anyway. I meant “compounds” very vaguely as survivable buildings with the electronics hardware and staffing facilities, but they could function as staffing centers with live-in barracks. Families? Quarters would be cramped for the first few months.

Either an EMP pulse could destroy or cripple the country, or hyperinflation. They way things are looking now, the possibility of either a local or global pulse is being ignored by government, or is being addressed without the knowledge of people who should know. High inflation with the potential for hyperinflation looks like (Paul Krugman notwithstanding) a deliberate goal of the government.

Either way, DHS will be the new knights in the feudal society that will emerge.

With inflation, we will all be signing “I owe my soul to the company store.”

This abuse of power has separated the Government from the Governed creating a tyrannical power that is no longer of the people and by the people.

This Prism/Phone Surveillance Program effectively isolated the Peoples Representatives from their constituents (members of congress couldn’t talk about the program) and because of the secrecy the program effectively castrated Congress and placed the judicial (secret FISA court) and executive over congressional oversight obliterating the constitutional checks & balances of co-equal branches.

This is an unprecedented breach of the public trust and our Constitution.

Our habit of legislating in secret…without comprehensive public debates and public scrutiny…passing laws we don’t read has got to end.

Here’s a seemingly comforting statistic: In all of 2012, the Obama administration went to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court only 200 times to ask for Americans’ “business records” under the USA Patriot Act.

Every year, the Justice Department gives Congress a tally of the classified wiretap orders sought and issued in terrorist and spy cases – it was 1,789 last year. At the same time, it reports the number of demands for “business records” in such cases, issued under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. And while the number of such orders has generally grown over the years, it has always managed to stay relatively low. In 2011, it was 205. There were 96 orders in 2010, and only 21 in 2009.

Thanks to the Guardian’s scoop, we now know definitively just how misleading these numbers are. You see, while the feds are required to disclose the number of orders they apply for and receive (almost always the same number, by the way), they aren’t required to say how many people are targeted in each order. So a single order issued to Verizon Business Solutions in April covered metadata for every phone call made by every customer. That’s from one order out of what will probably be about 200 reported in next year’s numbers.

The public numbers are the one bit of accountability around the surveillance court, and the Justice Department used them to misdirect the public away from a massive domestic NSA spying operation that, as several Senators approvingly noted today, has been running for seven years.

In 2011, Acting Assistant Attorney General Todd Hinnen relied on the same misleading numbers when he told the House Judiciary Committee that “on average, we seek and obtain section 215 orders less than 40 times per year.” Congressman James Sensenbrenner rightly took Hinnen to task today for juking the stats. “The Department’s testimony left the Committee with the impression that the Administration was using the business records provision sparingly and for specific materials,” Sensenbrenner writes (.pdf). “The recently released FISA order, however, could not have been drafted more broadly.”

Leaks reveal the truth in small slices. In 2006, a technician at an AT&T switching center in San Francisco followed some fiber optic splices straight into an NSA wiretapping program parked on the backbones of the internet. Now someone with access to a single Patriot Act order served on Verizon Business Solutions leaked it to the Guardian, so today’s news is that the FBI and the NSA are engaged in wholesale spying on Verizon customers. But the whole pie is certainly bigger than that.

There are hints of broader surveillance in the Verizon order. In addition to call records, the order demands cell phone data, like customers’ IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) number and another identifier that reveals the make and model of the phone. The mobile data is a non sequitur in that particular order, because Verizon Business Services isn’t a mobile carrier; it’s the long distance and landline business Verizon acquired as MCI in 2005.

The obvious conclusion is that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court uses the same catchall boilerplate order over and over again, just changing the company name and the date. The court that’s supposed to be protecting Americans from abusive domestic surveillance is not only failing in that duty, it’s also lazy.

Thanks to that laziness, we can fairly surmise that the orders are routine, and they are served on other carriers. Probably all of them. And probably continuously, renewed every three months for the last seven years.

That means the Administration has a database of every call to suicide prevention, every tip to a government fraud whistleblowing hotline, every call to the “find a meeting” number for every Alcoholics Anonymous chapter. And all it told us was that it uses the USA Patriot Act every now and then…”

Oh, they are transparent all right. Just not in the way they should be.

Face it, this Verizon link and the PRISM scandal that is breaking today come at a time at deep distrust of government. The IRS data was supposedly not to be used in any partisan ways and it was. The DoJ is acting like the palace guard running around seemingly unconstrained by the rule of law- when caught they just “investigate” themselves and find out that they did nothing wrong.

So now we learn that the government is collecting information on every call we make and can reach into our computers? The bastards at Fort Meade should put as much effort in keeping the Chinese from hacking our systems as they put into spying on Americans! The rat-eared despot earned all the distrust.

All I can say is that if this is a distraction then that must be one really lousy job report coming out today.

“HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Whatever Tuesday’s Redstone radar blob was, it was unlike anything most professional radar watchers have ever seen. Speculation has centered on secret defense testing at Redstone Arsenal, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville has said it has found feathery pieces of fiberglass near the area. All this has led Huntsville scientists to be discreet in their public speculation so far in deference to national security. But they are shedding more light on an event that exploded on radar like a thunderstorm, spread nearly 10 miles wide and a mile high, and lasted for nine hours – all while being virtually invisible to the naked eye…

Matt Havin and Dr. Michael Lawton, meteorologists at Huntsville’s Baron Services Inc., watched the blob on multiple radars at their operations center in Cummings Research Park. Company founder Bob Baron, a former television meteorologist, invented and developed the first tornado-tracking technology for television forecasters, and his company works with TV stations and companies nationwide. In an interview Wednesday about the blob, Havin first listed “what we know it’s not”

1. A thunderstorm or rain. There was no rain in the area.

2. Bats, birds or insects. “Bats or birds tend to have a (radar) signature that expands rapidly,” Havin said. “We’ve seen signatures like this with insects before, but usually it’s not this size or this duration.”

3. The 1,000 ladybugs released by the Huntsville Botanical Garden to fight aphids.

4. Typical small fragments of military chaff (radar countermeasures). Generally, Havin said, military chaff is carried by upper-level winds in bands. “Typically chaff signatures are released by aircraft,” Lawton said. “That’s why they have a long, sort of elongated signature. This did not look like that.”

5. Dust. “It wasn’t that,” Havin said, “otherwise we’d see signatures like that in the Plains all the time at harvest time, and we don’t.”

7. Smoke. “Out of any of the potential causes,” Havin said, “smoke is what this most closely looks like if it wasn’t going to be a severe thunderstorm. But to have a signature of this size and strength, you’d have to go from nothing to an extreme forest fire almost instantaneously. And you’d see a lot of smoke, which we did not.”

Here’s what the two meteorlogists can say about “whatever it was,” in Havin’s words.

1. It was suspended in the air for about nine hours, started on the north side of Redstone Arsenal just after 1:30 p.m. and ended around 11 p.m. (CDT). “That’s a very long time for something to be hanging around,” Havin said.

2. All the radar signatures “had to occur between the surface of the ground and about 5,500 feet above the ground above Redstone Arsenal.”

3. It was greater than 8-10 miles in diameter for “most of the duration.”

4. “It was pluming.” The source was apparently sending up either multiple or almost continual releases of “whatever it was from very low elevation or from the ground. It shot up from the surface or a very low level,” Havin said.

5. It showed up on different radar frequencies, including the S-band radar used by the National Weather Service and the C-band radar used by one local TV station.

Neither Havin nor Lawton, a Phd research meteorologist, has ever seen anything like this on radar. But despite that, what did people at Baron Services see when they went outside Tuesday to look? “It wasn’t anything obvious,” Havin said…”

But I have now reached the point where the conspiracy theories are the simplest explanations. It is very strange to me.

esr1951 on June 7, 2013 at 7:03 AM

It is hard to stay away from conspiracy theories. We have a crisis of trust in government.

The IRS has traditionally been scrupulous in not using their authority in ways that would be perceived as partisan. Now the IRS clearly set itself up specifically to harass groups that would not support a second term for the rat-eared despot or various agenda items like Obamacare and abortion.

The NSA is spying on Americans on American soil with impunity. And Clapper lied his ass off in Congressional hearings about it!

Starting back when the DoJ decided the New Black Panthers intimidating white voters shouldn’t be prosecuted as a hate crime, through a gun-running operation that has killed over 1,000 Mexicans, to the AP and Rosen scandals- they are lawless.

It is hard not to build an inherent but healthy mistrust in government. Which is bad because our society is built on the rule of law and the idea that our government is honest. None of us can have that sense of trust these days. The only cure is a massive house cleaning.

We are being played like fiddles. What else is going on that we are being distracted from noticing? Oh and BTW/OT…Benghazi: who ordered the stand down and where was Barry all evening?

indypat on June 7, 2013 at 7:10 AM

I said yesterday (when it was just the Verizon spying) that this was going to be a game changer. Now that we find out just how massive the spying is on Americans on American soil I’m convinced that it will be sooner rather than later.

“I read intelligence carefully. And I know that people are trying to get to us,” Feinstein said. “This is the reason we keep TSA doing what it’s doing. This the reason the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counter-terrorism. This is the reason for the national counter-terrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active.”

If Diane knows that people are trying to get us, why is she trying to make it easier for them by taking away our guns? If America is in such danger that the government has to spy on the citizens, why is Congress pushing for open borders? This was one of my biggest problems with President Bush, the need to normalize criminals who break into our country and take advantage of American generosity while at the same time, clinging to the flag of the country they came from. American’s must be frisked at the airport and spied on for their own safety, but there is no need to secure the border. This disconnect in security measures makes me suspect of government motives.

Why won’t any Republicans (Lee, Paul, etc.) point out that it makes no sense to have the TSA and wire-tapping while we allow anyone to cross the border, hang out in the shadows and then give them immunity from their crime.

But I have now reached the point where the conspiracy theories are the simplest explanations. It is very strange to me.

esr1951 on June 7, 2013 at 7:03 AM

It is hard to stay away from conspiracy theories. We have a crisis of trust in government.

The IRS has traditionally been scrupulous in not using their authority in ways that would be perceived as partisan. Now the IRS clearly set itself up specifically to harass groups that would not support a second term for the rat-eared despot or various agenda items like Obamacare and abortion.

The NSA is spying on Americans on American soil with impunity. And Clapper lied his ass off in Congressional hearings about it!

Starting back when the DoJ decided the New Black Panthers intimidating white voters shouldn’t be prosecuted as a hate crime, through a gun-running operation that has killed over 1,000 Mexicans, to the AP and Rosen scandals- they are lawless.

It is hard not to build an inherent but healthy mistrust in government. Which is bad because our society is built on the rule of law and the idea that our government is honest. None of us can have that sense of trust these days. The only cure is a massive house cleaning.

Happy Nomad on June 7, 2013 at 7:15 AM

Yeah.

There are people hidden and unaccountable for their actions.

What good are congressional hearings if the law has no teeth?

What good is congress if congress ceases to represent the people and passes laws secretively and laws they don’t live by.

Lyndsey Graham et,al. should be ashamed of themselves for defending the practice that sets americans against americans and fosters the creation of stratified classes for political gain.

So is the object of all of this to actually spy on Americans, or is the object to create this massive mistrust for some unknown end. The simplest explanation is the first, but now my inclination is to think the latter.

I hope you are right. The problem is, we have to overcome both the Democrats and the Vichy Republicans, like McCain and his pet dog, Graham.

kingsjester on June 7, 2013 at 7:21 AM

That’s part of the crisis of trust in government I seem to keep coming back to. When the Verizon part of the spying broke yesterday. How did Congress respond? “Oh that isn’t a big deal. We trust the NSA.” Congress should be as outraged as the public.

If Diane knows that people are trying to get us, why is she trying to make it easier for them by taking away our guns? If America is in such danger that the government has to spy on the citizens, why is Congress pushing for open borders? Ibanez Lotus on June 7, 2013 at 7:26 AM

Very good questions.

The lies cannot stand up to rudimentary logic.

What we have here is a fundamental shift in governance…and this status quo will be defended by the Apparatchiks.

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

In the 2008 election, we were worried about the redistributive part while he was working on that and negating the our liberties. It appears that the Constitution is being shredded in its entirety, including “what the states can’t do to you“, “what the federal government can’t do to you…”

But, those who treated it as no big deal were the entrenched who are privy to the knowledge some of the others in Congress are not given. Basically, they were in on it all along. They think they’re all Col. Jessups.

So is the object of all of this to actually spy on Americans, or is the object to create this massive mistrust for some unknown end. The simplest explanation is the first, but now my inclination is to think the latter.

esr1951 on June 7, 2013 at 7:28 AM

The simple political objective has been divide & conquer…which is why we see the steady emphasis on tribal grievance(s) with the social isolation and targeting of oppositional groups. Fracturing the potential unity of any opposition groups.

The legacy press has been complicit in both censoring the news and lobbying for partisan causes.

Agencies within the executive filled with unelected Apparatchik that are unaccountable and cannot be fired…who lie and subvert the rule of law have become a separated class loyal to the party objective.

Elected representatives like Feinstein line their pockets with gubmint contracts awarded to their families,insider trading and lucrative lobbying careers.

When members of congress like Feinstein, McCain,Graham etc. have disdain for their constituents…They cease to represent their equals…They are no longer citizen legislators, but have become a self-righteous governing class of overseers.

We in the general public have no idea if the algorithms work, if they’re fair, if they’re putting a lot of innocent Americans under suspicion or on watch lists, etc. This is simply not the way criminal investigation or even counter-intelligence has ever worked in this country under our Constitution; it’s working backwards. Those we have entrusted with the duty of our protection always previously started from the wrongdoing (or a tip of wrongdoing) and work their way out from there; it has never been, collect every bit of information they can on absolutely everyone, and then sift through it until they find what they’re looking for.

Clapper emphasizes, “The program at issue here is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). By statute, the Court is empowered to determine the legality of the program.”

But who watches the watchmen?

“I would just push back on the idea that the court has signed off on it, so why worry?” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it, and publishes almost none of its opinions. It has never been an effective check on government.”

Seriously, the “who watches the watchmen” is what should alarm every American citizen, because we do not know the answer to this question.

A short hop, skip and jump backwards in the Wayback Machine to 2008 (in honor of yesterday being the anniversary of the release of 1984):

The 2001 audio tape of Barack Obama describing the Constitution as a document of “negative liberties” reveals an utterly Orwellian Obama. How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as “positive liberty” be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty.
Notions like “positive liberty” are part of the web of thought control by language manipulation which Orwell described in 1984. If Obama cannot think of “positive liberty” as a contradiction in terms, then he simply cannot think. The conscious surrender of language to the needs of the party creates a self-made prison from which escape is, quite literally, inconceivable. These unguarded remarks by Obama display a mind trapped in a reality in which words are phantoms.

“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems, Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works; they’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

This bears constant repeating as we are told to trust our government. Tyranny is indeed lurking just around the corner no matter what a lazy stupid commie says.

How neatly it all fits. ESR goes to the local hospital. “Sorry ESR, we can’t give you that new stroke treatment. You (pick one: are a terrorist, make too much money, have already used your annual benefits, cheated the IRS). Death panel in place and you are an unwilling organ donor.

“Disclosure of the massive surveillance of phone records and internet communications risks “long-lasting and irreversible harm” to US national security, the director of national intelligence says.

Late on Thursday night US time James Clapper issued a bullet-point defence of the surveillance programs disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post, saying they contained “numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties”. To correct the “misleading impression left in the article” – apparently a reference to the Guardian’s original story – Clapper said he approved the declassification of his defence of the National Security Agency’s collection of every phone record from millions of Verizon customers…

“There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” Clapper wrote, “which ensures that those activities comply with the Constitution and laws and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties. The program at issue here is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). By statute, the Court is empowered to determine the legality of the program.”

How neatly it all fits. ESR goes to the local hospital. “Sorry ESR, we can’t give you that new stroke treatment. You (pick one: are a terrorist, make too much money, have already used your annual benefits, cheated the IRS). Death panel in place and you are an unwilling organ donor.

indypat on June 7, 2013 at 8:09 AM

Aaaand an increasingly militarized police force/entities expected to enforce laws arbitrarily based on shifting partisan politics instead of the constitution.

I think few would dispute that not more than 1 in 100 low info voters would know who Huxley or Orwell were. This is the result of 50 years of leftist control of public education and academia. And therein lies the problem. Even if public education and academia were put right tomorrow, it would take a generation for that to affect voting patterns.

As I’ve stated on a few other threads… it is time for conservative Congressmen to get out in front of this and put forth a bill to REPEAL the PATRIOT ACT. If we can no longer trust the Executive Branch to justly wield the overreach in power it was given, then it is time to remove that power.